#659 – Altium...Acquired!

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release February 20th, 2024. Episode 659. Altium acquired.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. And haji-mem-as-hi-te to all you Altium users. Because you are now joining the land of the rising sun, hopefully.

Dave Jones: Breaking news. Breaking news. Yes. Altium has been finally acquired by Renesys.

Chris Gammell: Not acquired yet. This is part of the conversation, I think. I'm curious.

Dave Jones: No, well, it's signed. Like, it's a done deal. It's a done deal, but it hasn't technically happened yet, I don't think.

Chris Gammell: This kind of stuff gets blocked by regulators all the time, man. Figma was not bought by Adobe.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, okay.

Chris Gammell: I personally do not think this deal should be able to go through. Really? Why? Okay. Tell us why. I think this is – so I don't know anything about the – how about this? If I was a chip company and I was competing with Renaissance, I would be a little shaken by this. Right. Yeah. I think that this is potentially – this is basically – I don't think they have direct access to customer data. I'm sure that they have protections in place for that, and yet it feels like a really strong competitive advantage. Now, you could say that Renaissance owning Altium is maybe just another cash flow into the bottom line kind of thing for them, whatever. But it feels like finger on the scale kind of thing. So I would say – yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, there's a couple of issues involved in here. Not only is Altium a PCB design company, obviously.

Chris Gammell: A company, as one article said, yeah.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: PCB design company. But they also have Octopart, right?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Which is – there's basically two big industry search engines, right, for parts. If you want to type in a part number, you want to find the cheapest price, availability, all that sort of stuff across multiple vendors. Then you either use Finechips or you use Octopart. Finechips are owned by – A supply frame. Now Siemens. Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah. Well, Siemens now. Yes, of course. Right. And Altium own Octopart. They bought that quite a long time ago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is an incredibly smart move on their part. Yeah, good investment. Incredibly smart. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely fantastic. And that's a small cash flow.

Chris Gammell: And it allows them to have like a library of data pulled in, that stuff like that. They had that kind of a social face – where they didn't have a cloud product for a long time. Well, they had a quasi-cloud product, but that was basically a cloud-facing product to get like intelligence data around what people are searching for or whatever.

Dave Jones: Altium have bought quite a few cloud companies over the years. Yeah. So, yeah, cloud-related companies. And now the, you know, Altium 365 is known as their cloud solution. That's what I was thinking. As their cloud offering. Yeah. And that's one of the things. We'll go into that Renesys actually want. But the other one, which a lot of people don't know about, is that Altium-owned Tarskin. And you've probably never heard of Tarskin. Okay. But it's big in, well, Europe, I guess. But it's big in Japan. Somewhere like that, right? Japan. All right. It's big in the Europe's regions, right? The EU kind of thing. And what Tarskin is, is it's a compiler slash development system debugger, everything for automotive processes, right? And I'm talking not just Renesys, right? It'll do the RH850 series. It'll do Infineon. It'll do Freescale. It'll do Bosch.

Chris Gammell: So it's more like a Sega kind of subcompany.

Dave Jones: It's like a Sega debugger kind of thing. But it's like, I believe it's an actual compiler. I've never actually used it myself, but yeah, Tarskin is like a big, Tarskin was like, I think, one of, if not the biggest sort of like debugger in the automotive space. It was quite large. So I don't know what it's like these days. I don't know. You know, leave it in the comments if you have an idea of how, you know, big it still is. But yeah, it used to be a big deal. And when Altium bought Tarskin, that was a big deal in the automotive industry. So now, Renesys, who one of their big markets for their processors is not the sort of like the hobby kind of, you know, hacker markets that we're kind of into, right? It's in the automotive space.

Chris Gammell: They're in the place where there's actually money.

Dave Jones: Where there's actually money and volumes in the tens of millions, right? Yeah, yeah, right. It makes sense. Yep. Yeah. And yeah, so they're big in that. So yeah, there's a few things going on there. It's not as simple as just, you know, PCB design.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. Anyway. Which it was so, okay. Yeah. So all this stuff is interesting. And, you know, I think my mind went negative in thinking just like, okay, if there was access to this customer data, which I don't think there is, basically, they would have this competitive advantage around like, competitive advantage is probably the best way to say it too. Because it would be like, they would be able to see what other chips are out there. They would be able to see if their chips are doing well, if they're targeting the right market, if there's like a gap in the market, that sort of thing. Like, I could see that all being a competitive advantage.

Dave Jones: Possibly. I don't think they have, I don't think it gives them that much visibility though. Like, it doesn't give you insight into the organization of how many parts you're buying at what price and stuff like that. Like, it doesn't give you any of that information. I didn't even think that.

Chris Gammell: I just meant like metadata, like, is this chip on the board, right? Is it like a, like, you wouldn't, there's a difference between like, BOM and buying data.

Dave Jones: Possibly, but wouldn't there be companies out there that could sort of like sell you that kind of data anyway?

Chris Gammell: I think that stuff's pretty close to the vest, I think. I think, I mean, you could definitely, you know, maybe if Arrow or Avnet had that data, they could say like, you know, that 20 companies in this region are using chip ABC123, that sort of thing. And they could anonymize it, but having just, being closer to that data means you can kind of close the loop a little bit as a design, as a silicon designer, that sort of thing. Got it. I'm probably being like a bit too conspiratorial on this. Oh, I think so.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure I am because like, I'm not sure I would sign that, you know, like I was a Tesla and using, using Altium or something like that. I wouldn't sign, you know, if my data wasn't safe, I wouldn't sign the software agreement, right? There would be like provisions in place there, but there's always metadata and you can always kind of get some kind of information about that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Possibly, but another thing a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, Altium being pushing all this cloud solution, right?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: But in the industry, the customers, especially the big customers go, uh-uh, I ain't having my shit on the cloud. That's why I want my internal, like that's why Altium had to build specific tools to let you host your own like internal cloud on your own, like inside your company. So it still works cloudy, but it's not web-based. It's on your own server, secure within your own company, you know, service system. Right.

Chris Gammell: And I think that's how a lot of the big iron acts currently anyways, right? Like if you look at like, like, um, uh, God damn, one of the other, the other big ones that are out there, um, mentor and.

Dave Jones: All those. Yep. All of them. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They all have on-premises, you know, software and, you know, like enterprise level type stuff like that for similar reasons, right? Especially in the defense industry, automotive, right? They want to basically lock everything down. So like that makes sense. But I can imagine if you just focused on the Altium 365, which has been a huge focus from, you know, the mass market stuff, right? So now putting aside the, the, the large scale, which I'm sure represents a ton of their, their revenue streams. But even if you just look at the number of users that are out there, I'm sure that the Altium 365 stuff is also, you know, has more users, maybe at lower spend number per user, but has a lot of interesting information there. That's the thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So do you know how many subscribers Altium has? How many users? Well, not users, but like ones who actually subscribe to the, you know, the maintenance program.

Chris Gammell: In fact, I will share my screen with you. There was a, there's a Zoom call that's public that you can just watch. And now I can't find it, of course.

Dave Jones: I've got the slides for it. So. Oh, you do? Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got the slides for it. So anyway, people are going to tell us how many subscribers, 61,000 subscribers.

Chris Gammell: 61,000 subscribers. And I can't tell if it's in that number of a subscriber at like, so if it's like, I'm guessing that's individuals.

Dave Jones: A subscriber would be somebody on maintenance. It'd be somebody on maintenance. And that wouldn't be one company.

Chris Gammell: ABC Corp. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like, is ABC Corp the one subscriber because they're the paying for it and they have 100 engineers? Or is it 100 engineers at ABC Corp?

Dave Jones: Well, you would think that for marketing reasons, they would inflate the numbers, right? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker ?: You want to have the same.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we're probably looking at the same slide here. This is page five of their slide presentation. And they show 61,000 subscribers, 36.5 EBITDA, like 77% recurring revenue. But the one next to that, that's the one that really gets me. I'm just so surprised by this. Okay. So they had Altium at a glance, $263 million in revenue.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: In 2023.

Dave Jones: We haven't even said how much were they bought for? 9.3 billion Australian dollars.

Chris Gammell: Or 6 billion US dollars. 6 billion US dollars. Yes, yes.

Dave Jones: Which is, by the way, is the largest acquisition of any company on the Australian stock exchange by a Japanese firm in history. So it is huge as far as the Australian stock market is concerned. Now, to answer your question before is will this be stopped by the regulators? Regulators. Well, who are the regulators in quote marks? They would be the Australian regulators. This is – remember, Altium is still an Australian company even though their headquarters are in the US. Which is weird. I didn't know that.

Chris Gammell: I thought they had moved the company to the US too, but no, it's just the headquarters.

Dave Jones: Well, their official headquarters is there. So I don't know how that works in US corporate law, but they're publicly listed on the Australian stock market. Yeah, but EU regulators block stuff.

Chris Gammell: EU regulators are the ones who tanked the Activision Microsoft deal, right? Yeah, but – They're not a European company.

Dave Jones: Renesys are not buying Altium US. They're buying all of the shareholders on the Australian stock market.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Right?

Dave Jones: So I think it comes under Australian corporation law. It could be wrong.

Chris Gammell: It could be. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

Dave Jones: But I don't think the Yanks get a say in it. I'm not sure.

Speaker ?: I'm not sure.

Chris Gammell: Often have had a say in big enough deals.

Dave Jones: But because they are officially headquartered there, maybe they do also have a say. But in theory, Renesys could just simply buy all the shares and own – and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Effective, yeah. They could effectively say, $100 a share, here you go, and everyone sells, right? And which they sold for 68 Australian dollars per share, if you don't know. Which was like 34% or something above that day's market price. So it was a big knockout offer.

Chris Gammell: It's like a really – they're really overpaying. So like they have big dreams at least, right? So basically 24 times the revenue, not even the profit, just the revenue. And so like they're probably interested in the cash flow from it. Like I don't know how that stuff works.

Dave Jones: Well, Altium is debt-free. A lot of people don't know this. Altium has always been a debt-free company, which I'm sure we'll go into because it comes into my horror story.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but still like that's a lot of – that's a lot. That's like paying a lot.

Dave Jones: It's 20 times over, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Over revenues, Dave, not over like profits. I know.

Dave Jones: I know.

Chris Gammell: That's a lot.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. They're paying – well, we should talk about the previous deal, what, a couple of years back, where they turned down a $34 a share offer from Autodesk. Autodesk tried to buy Altium. And the Altium CEO advised the shareholders not to take it. He thought that they could get better value. And sure enough, that was a good call. It was. Yeah. As far as the shareholders went.

Chris Gammell: Two and a half years later, and they doubled in money. I mean, that's crazy.

Dave Jones: Who would you rather have seen it sold to? Autodesk or Renesys?

Chris Gammell: I don't really have a dog in this race, Dave. I mean, like –

Dave Jones: Well, you seem to. You are unhappy that Renesys bought them.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm unhappy. If I take the perspective of another chip company, I was unhappy. That's the first thing my brain went to is just like, oh, wow. I had nefarious thoughts about this sort of thing. It could be completely misplaced. Just so that's –

Dave Jones: Is there an analogy for this? Like this is the company that makes the tools that design the boards that the chips are put on. So like, you know, how far removed – is that enough far removed from the sale of chips to be a kind of meh thing or what? I don't know. It's kind of –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess if we moved up to the value chain too, right? And if we said like, okay, now Renesys is not going to buy Altium, but they're going to buy Mentor. And like the chip design software as well, right? So now the competitors who – the competitors in the silicon space would then be upset because it would be like, well, now our design tools are owned by our competitor.

Dave Jones: Okay. What if it wasn't a chip company? What if it was AVX who make caps? What if it was a capacitor manufacturer who bought Altium?

Chris Gammell: I would say we're paying too much for caps if they can afford it.

Dave Jones: It's too much free cash floating around. For those who want to know, and this is an all-cash deal. I think they did get a loan for some of it, but it's basically an all-cash deal. Japanese firms are – Japan is on a 30-year high as far as cashed-up companies go. So there's a lot of cashed-up companies in Japan buying up companies right about now. So it's a big thing. So – well, it's a thing anyway. Okay. I didn't know. Yeah. So, yes. So there you go. Japanese, yeah, there's a lot of companies doing this. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, we've seen obviously a lot of consolidation in the chip market itself, right? Chip companies buying other chip companies, right? No doubt about that.

Dave Jones: It's been almost total. I'm surprised there's not just one chip maker now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: There's been so many. It's just laughable over the years. We couldn't – so much we joke about. We literally can't keep up.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, it's just – yeah, nuts.

Chris Gammell: Well, what happens is new upstarts happen and I just buy those chips, you know? Yeah, right. Out of China.

Dave Jones: Out of China, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll take it, man. Yeah. Well, it's – that's where the regulators might step in if it was a Chinese company buying. They might go – because, see, China's out of flavour at the moment. China's out of flavour at the moment.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: With the Australian government, with the US government, with everyone, basically. So, whereas Japan, hey, you know, friendly Japan, everyone wants to be, you know, fine. They've been doing anything for 30 years. They've been neutral, you know? It's like, you know, ever since they dominated the industry, for those who don't remember. Right, right. All of this stuff's made in Japan, as Marty McFly says, you know, back in the 1980s. Yep. Then their economy tanked.

Chris Gammell: Right. And there was some negative stuff then, too, right? There's price fixing around – DRAM prices and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, there's just big companies, lots of money flowing around, like, you know, just stuff happening. But, yeah. Yeah, so, I don't know. What do you think of all this stuff, Dave? I mean, like, you are a former Altium employee.

Dave Jones: I'm a former Altium. I spent four – I was an inmate for four years at Altium. That's right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you're probably the longest time user of Altium and PCAD. What was it before?

Dave Jones: I started using Altium, which was Protel back then. Protel. It was Protel Auto Tracks. And that was – for those who don't know, Altium's an Australian company. They were founded in Tasmania, of all places, the Map of Tassie, in 1985 by Nick Martin, who's a very nice guy. And he was working at the University of Tasmania. Oh, I might as well go through the history, shall I?

Chris Gammell: Sure, yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. He was working at the University of Tasmania at the time in 1985. And he went, hey, you know, maybe this PCB design software. So he got Turbo Pascal back in – Balland Turbo Pascal. And he wrote the DOS-based PCB tool. It was called Protel PCB back then. That was in 1985. And I started using it in 89 at my first company. Okay. 89 at my first company. And that was – and then it was only a PCB tool back then. It didn't have the companion schematic. That actually only came a couple of years later. That was, I think, 87, 88, something like that. Protel schematic. And then they released a low-cost version. It was called Easy Tracks. And that was – well, I can't remember the prices at the time. And it was dongle. It used a hardware dongle at the time.

Chris Gammell: Oh, classic. Yeah, yeah. That's something where, like, I think about talking to my kids about it and be like, yeah, there's no app store. There was the UPS van.

Dave Jones: No, no, you plug in that dongle into the parallel port.

Chris Gammell: Delivering an envelope with a DB25 to the back of your power computer.

Dave Jones: Shove it up your printer port, yeah. And you could still plug your printer in the back of it. It was kind of like in series with it. Yeah, yeah, pass-through kind of thing. And, yeah, in I think 89 or 90 maybe, they released version 1.61 ND. And ND stands for no dongle. So they released a no dongle version. And that one was pirated like there was no tomorrow once that happened. So everyone I knew had a copy of 1.61 ND, the no dongle version. But they still made money hand over fist, right? You know, it was still fine. The company did absolutely fantastic. And then I think in the early 90s, probably 1990, 91, they released – hey, back then, this was groundbreaking. It was the first CAD software for Windows. People don't know that like everything was like DOS-based or, you know, Unix even back then.

Chris Gammell: You had to get out of Windows into the DOS prompt and then run it from there. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: This was like Windows 3.11 stuff, right? This was the days of Windows 3. And they released ProTel for Windows.

Chris Gammell: I have no nostalgia for those days at all. No? None at all.

Dave Jones: It's great.

Chris Gammell: It's great.

Dave Jones: You haven't lived unless you've installed Windows on 12 floppy disks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, like –

Chris Gammell: Were you on the show – who the hell was telling – oh, no. Because I recorded with Jeff when you were – Yes, I missed that one.

Dave Jones: Yes, I was on holidays.

Chris Gammell: He was telling me CRTs are back in fashion. Did you know this? What? No. Did you hear about this? No. Yeah. I was just like, what are you – I thought Jeff was trolling me. He's like, yeah, you know, there's like vintage collectors and like people want to have CRT because of fast response times. I still don't believe it, honestly.

Dave Jones: Fast response time on a CRT? Have you heard about phospholag? I mean –

Chris Gammell: Dave, I am not the person – call Jeff, you know. Right. That sounds like a good – Okay. That sounds like a good EV blog thing where you're just like, all right, now we're going to talk to a weirdo in Seattle.

Dave Jones: About CRTs. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. White for the win. White phosphor for the win. None of this green or amber rubbish.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I was a white phosphor fanboy. But that was quite rare back in the day because it used like an expensive phosphor or something. It used a – you know, it wasn't – most people just used green or amber back in the day. But yeah, white was all paper white as they called it. Oh, paper white monitors. And then you could get a vertical form factor monitor. So it looked like an A4 page.

Chris Gammell: We're going too deep here, man. We're going too deep.

Dave Jones: It's the early days of desktop publishing, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. Anyway. Yeah. That was a big deal. Anyway, early 90s, ProTel for Windows, right? And that was a big deal. And I switched over to ProTel for Windows because this is when I started working as a professional PCB designer. It was like in the early 90s. And yeah, so I was using ProTel for Windows. And that was great. That was absolutely great. But that was the first CAD tool, especially the – I think it was the first CAD tool for Windows, let alone PCB tool. So it was the first PCB tool by donkey's years for Windows, I think. So yeah, and it caught on big time. So they bet big on that Windows would – because at the time, it didn't – people didn't know that Windows would be the future. It was like, you know, we don't know. Is Mac going to dominate? You know, is the Mac OS going to dominate? Is it going to be Windows? Is it going to be something else?

Chris Gammell: It would have been about 30 years later.

Dave Jones: It's like, yeah. It's like, yeah, but they bet and they won. So anyway, yeah, so ProTel for Windows. And then Altium did a – they did a public listing in 99, 2000. I think it was late 99. They listed on the Australian stock market and they had ProTel 99 back then and ProTel 99 SE, which was the industry standard tool for 20 years. Practically everyone in China, every development house in China used ProTel 99. It was like – it was the industry standard. I can't believe how long. When I was working there in 2011 and like the early 2010s, people were – it was incredibly difficult for the salespeople to sell new licenses to Altium because everyone was happy with ProTel 99 SE. They were going, why do I want to buy this new version? I'm happy. ProTel does everything I want, you know, and it's stable and it's – you know. It had bugs but it had a bunch of documented bugs. I think I had personally had 12 documented bugs in ProTel 99 SE but being a professional designer, I know how to just avoid the bugs happening, you know. Yeah. So, yeah. And then – so they're publicly listed on the share market. I think at five bucks a share or something, five Australian dollars per share. So, if you bought way back then – and I know somebody did bought big way back then – it's – you know, to sell for $68 like 24 years later is not a big increase. It's not – it's actually not much. So, really to make money like – Yeah, so everyone's talking about Altium being this huge success story but a lot of people don't know that they – or was it $2.50 or something they floated at? Anyway, it was a couple of bucks, right? So, to go from a couple of bucks to $68 now that they were bought at is not a huge increase. So, you had to buy in right at the bottom. But, of course, what happened in 2000? It was the dot-com bust, right? So, they listed just before the dot-com bust happened. And, of course, yeah, the shares just went down and down and down and they eventually got down to $0.10. That was when I was working there. They were $0.10 a share. So, if you bought in back then, as I was going to – I've told this horror story before – I realised that I could have made $13.7 million. That's what they'd be worth today. Yep. Yeah. Not including dividends along the way. Yeah. Oh, boy. Anyway. Yeah. I wouldn't have held on for $15. Yeah, I wouldn't have held on for that long. Yeah. I know. Yeah. But, yes. So, and, of course, a bit more history is that back then is that – okay. Hang on. Altium bought Morphic when I was there, I think, in 2011 or something like that. And Morphic, for those who don't know, the current CEO is not Nick Martin. He's gone. He was booted out, right? So, the original founder. How is his name?

Chris Gammell: Sorry? Aram? Who's the new guy?

Dave Jones: Oh, Aram Murkazemi. Aram. Aram. I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing it correctly. I think it's Aram Murkazemi. It's an Iranian name. Anyway, he was one of the original employees at Protel back in the day because he worked at the University of Tasmania with Nick Martin or he was a friend of his or something like that, right? But he was based in Tasmania back then. So, he was one of the early employees. And after the share market, after they did the IPO on the share market, Aram left to form his own company called Morphic, which was getting into cloud stuff and other development things and stuff like that, right? And he wrote forum, like you could use this forum software. So, I think the Altium forum today is still using Morphic software, right? Still using Morphic, which is quite funny. And then in about 2010, 2011 or something like that, Altium acquired Morphic. And this was a big thing with the shareholders at the time because Altium was like, their shares were like 10 cents. They were in the toilet, right? They're like 10, 15 cents or something like that. I can't remember exactly. But they were in the toilet, right? Altium didn't have much cash to throw around. So, Morphic was a company that was practically dead. It only had like $50,000 income or something like that. Wow, yeah. Right? This is not private information. This is all publicly available information, right? If you followed the Altium press releases at the time and everything else, right? It's all in there. And because I don't have any private information, by the way. So, everything I know comes from publicly released Altium information on the share market.

Chris Gammell: Dave didn't pay attention at all when he worked there. So, you wouldn't.

Dave Jones: No, I didn't. I was not in the click. You know, I was not part of the click, right? We won't go into that side of things. But, yeah, I was definitely not part of that. But, you know, I followed it closely, as did many other users at the time. Because I'm an Altium user. Even though I was an Altium employee, I was an Altium user first, really. First and foremost. Yeah, yeah. So, I followed all this stuff. And they acquired, I think, they acquired Morphic. So, Nick bought out his best buddy, Aram's almost worthless company at the time. And it was like 10% or something of Altium shares went towards it, 10, 15%. It was huge.

Chris Gammell: Is it because Altium was worth so little? Is that what you mean?

Dave Jones: Well, no. I think he just wanted to help his mate out, I think. I don't know. Like, Morphic was not worth that much. And everyone, like, I think there was a big shareholder thing at the time. A lot of shareholders were grumbling, like, why have you given, you know, 15% or 15% of the Altium shares? I don't know if they released new shares for that. They might have diluted them or something. I don't know. I can't remember the details. But anyway, they paid a lot.

Chris Gammell: Morphic was spelled M-O-R-F-I-K.

Dave Jones: Yes, M-O-R-F-I-K. Yeah, Morphic.

Chris Gammell: Oh, God.

Dave Jones: Morphic technology.

Chris Gammell: You know, here's the thing, Dave. This show is made for nerds. Yeah. And, you know, we're nerds at heart. But we are terrible at naming things. Like, this is what happens when a double E goes and names a company. Yes, and names a company. Because what the hell?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. It's Morphic. I have no idea what it means. I've got no idea. Anyway, yes, so they bought Morphic for a huge premium, which gave Aram, who I think was probably Morphic's only shareholder, because it was just, I think it was a one-man company almost. And it gave him, because he still had shares for when he worked through the float, the Altium float, you know, when it flowed on the stock market. So he's still there. And being one of the original, not founders, but he was one of the first employees there, he had a lot of shares. So this gave him a lot of shareholder power.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that article you sent me said that he's going to make $650 million on this deal.

Dave Jones: He's going to make $650 million, and Nick Martin, unfortunately, sold all his shares after something I'll tell you about in a minute. Yeah. Yeah, so they're quite Morphic. And I think, yeah, they're still using Morphic as, like, the forum software. So if you're, I haven't used the Altium forum. I can't even remember the last time I used it. But I think I still use Morphic. So they had some sort of cloudy deployment technology.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, here you go. Hobart, Tasmania. It is a Morphic. It is an Ajax. Wow, this doesn't even make sense.

Dave Jones: Ajax, that's it. Yeah, yeah. It's an Ajax thing.

Chris Gammell: I always think Ajax was, like, the thing that, like, it was the tool. Remember when Google used to have a homepage where you could, like, customize it, and you could, like, drag, like, widgets around on, like, a browser? Yeah, they used to love it. Oh, man. Really? You could, like, have, like, all these different, you could have, like, a Gmail thing. So it was, like, a customizable homepage. Oh, okay. And that was all Ajax-based. So anytime you, like, click and drag something around, it was all Ajax-based. Right, okay. Interesting. That's what I always think of when I think of Ajax, but it's not. Yeah. It seems like this is just software-y type stuff, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, it's all, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: It's a visual development tool which lets developers create Ajax-based web applications in a true, wizzy-wizzy fashion.

Dave Jones: Web applications, that's it, yes. So you could make forums, a web-based forum software. You could make any, so it wasn't forum software. It was kind of like a, yeah, compilery, sort of like a visual GUI compilery something or other. Huh. Yeah. Anyway, so Altium bought Morphic. And, of course, Altium was in the toilet at the time, but Nick Martin, he, of course, being the original founder, he had the most shares and nobody could ever.

Chris Gammell: He just got to do it, yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's why a lot of people didn't like the direction that he took in terms of the company product direction and, you know, stuff like that. But they couldn't say anything because he was the biggest shareholder. But apparently the Morphic acquisition gave Aram a ton of shares and then in, I guess, in conjunction with the rest of the board members who also have shares, also had a significant number of shares and other significant shareholders, they finally had the numbers to boot Nick Martin out as the CEO of Altium. So I think, what was that, 2012, maybe? 2013, something like that. I can't remember exactly, but, yeah, Nick got booted out. And then after that, Aram, no, they had an interim CEO, I think, one of the board members or something. And then a year later or something, they appointed Aram as the CEO. And he's now the current CEO. He stands to make, you know, $650 million or whatever. And they changed the company direction. And they, you know, scrapped all the China stuff. So they moved out of China because that was a big mistake. Altium, of course, packed up and moved to China. And that's when they sacked half the company, of which I was one of them. That's right. And, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Best decision that ever happened to you, man. Come on.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You wouldn't be where you are right now. You'd still be a...

Dave Jones: Yeah, but the worst decision was not buying, not using my 20 grand payout to buy Altium shares at 10 cents.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. How would you know that, though? Come on.

Dave Jones: I know, I know, because no one could predict that Nick would have been booted as CEO, you know. So, anyway. And they totally changed, and they focused on the actual PCB product, and they focused on, and then they started paying a dividend back to shareholders. And it just slowly got, you know, the share price just kept going up and up and up and up and never really stopped. So, yeah, that was... So I kind of feel sorry for Nick because he's a nice guy. I do like Nick, and he founded it. And, yeah. And he, after he was booted out, I think shortly after he sold all his shares, I do believe, at a pretty rock bottom.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm sure they were forced to sell sort of thing, right? If you're not allowed to...

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. He was not forced. He just... I think he just had enough. Or maybe he needed the money for some other venture. I don't know what he went into. But anyway, yeah, unfortunately, I do believe, I don't know, stand to be corrected, but I think he sold all his shares. So I don't think Nick, the original founder, gets anything out of this new acquisition deal, which is a real shame. Whereas Aram, well, hats off. He really directed the company well, like in terms of business-wise. And it turned it into the behemoth it is these days. And, like, most people on the share market have no idea what Altium does. They're like, as you said, like there's articles calling them like a chip maker company or something.

Chris Gammell: I just found a Sydney Morning Herald article where it says...

Dave Jones: What does it say?

Chris Gammell: It's about Aram, actually. Former refugee now worth $300 million as this obscure tech firm soars. Which is like, all right. Yeah, I guess if you're like...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No. Well, that's actually accurate. It's totally obscure. Nobody knows what Altium does.

Chris Gammell: Obscure? So, yeah.

Dave Jones: I've actually had a couple of investor companies...

Chris Gammell: I know too many Altium users.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. I've had a couple of investment firms actually contact me because at the time, you know, when the... I guess my name was out there of having worked at Altium. And they wanted to pay me to get my opinion on the... What is this Altium thing? And, you know... Is it worth it, right? Is it worth us investing in it? And what are the competition? And how do they interact? And they were going to pay me to sit down with them. I said, nah, couldn't be bothered, you know. And, yeah, this was when it started to gain traction. You know, they were starting... They were at a few bucks and they were starting to climb up and they're debt-free and cash... Cash coming out the wazoo and... Cash to book.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. Okay. I can't believe I didn't know. I knew the company at the time. I knew the company had zero debt and it was at cash value. For those who don't know, that is like...

Chris Gammell: Like a safe buy, you're saying.

Dave Jones: Like it is unless the company drives itself into the ground, which, by the way, could have happened.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Could have happened.

Chris Gammell: They tried a couple of times.

Dave Jones: Could have happened. But, yeah. For those who don't know, the ultimate buy-in of a company is when it's at cash value, which means that, say, a company's worth... A company has a shared valuation. I think what you mean to say, Dave. An entire market valuation of $10 million.

Chris Gammell: The air power does not offer any investment advice in any legal capacity. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And share prices, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: But this is the holy grail, right? Is if you can find a company, let's say they have a total market valuation, which is the share price multiplied by the number of shares, right? Let's say it's worth $100 million. And they have $100 million, but that company has $100 million cash in the bank and zero debt. So you are not paying any multiple at all for this company. There is no multiple involved, right? So it's like, it's the holy grail buy-in. And I knew it. I knew it was the holy grail buy-in, but I still didn't do it. You know.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. Nothing venture, nothing gamed, huh? Yeah, well. Stupid. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. I'm sure I would have sold when it became a 10-bagger. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. There you go. So that's a history about him. Yes. That is a good history.

Chris Gammell: That was a good. No, that was good. It was good to have that stuff. Does this change anything? I think that's the other question, right? So like...

Dave Jones: Well, that's the thing. That's what everyone's asking.

Chris Gammell: I was doing it from the perspective of the chip competitors, right? Potentially, you might be upset. Might not be anything you can do about it. Might not actually matter that much, whatever.

Dave Jones: I don't think... I'm erringing on the side it doesn't matter that much.

Chris Gammell: Doesn't matter.

Dave Jones: Because I don't... I think you'd be surprised how little information they're going to be able to get about their competitors and stuff like that. So, ooh. I just had a power dip here. The lights just went out. Ooh. My computer did not... Ooh. There's light. No, there's thunder as well. Ooh. Thunder.

Chris Gammell: A little akka-daka, man. We got to...

Dave Jones: Oh, there it goes again. It dipped again. Either that or I'm blinking solidly. There's something wrong with my blinking.

Chris Gammell: Power supply experiment's gone wrong.

Dave Jones: Whoa. Taking down the grid. So, if we go...

Chris Gammell: All right. Well... Oh, God. We've already gotten all the ultimate history.

Dave Jones: If I drop out, hopefully we're recording.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's only been a 38-minute amp hour, right? 35-minute amp hour.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Are we 38 minutes in?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Seriously? Is that long or short?

Dave Jones: 37 minutes in. Oh, jeez. That's a long... I thought... Jeez. You thought you just started talking.

Chris Gammell: No, you were talking for a while there, man. Okay. I don't know if you know that, man.

Dave Jones: Got it. Yeah, I'd be like to... Yeah. Anyway, I can tell more stories if you want. If you want to go for a two-hour episode, we can... No, I think we should get back to how it impacts people.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. How it impacts people. Some things I think about. Renaissance is not a software company. I don't care what they say. So, like, do I think that, like...

Dave Jones: They claim to be into...

Speaker ?: Everybody says this.

Dave Jones: There's an interesting slide on which shows them being a...

Chris Gammell: You share that slide deck? I just had the actual... Is it public enough that we could share it or no?

Dave Jones: Listening? Yeah. I don't have a direct link, though.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: No, let me try. Oh, hang on.

Chris Gammell: I have the Zoom link that I'll at least drop in the... There's a public Zoom webinar, so I'll drop that in the show notes.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I will try and give you this.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure it's going to be that exciting, right? It's, like, basically... No. Okay, I've sent it to you on Google. ...forward investor type stuff. So, hopefully that works. But they're going over the same slide deck that we're talking about here. Yes. Right. So, if it's not available here...

Dave Jones: So, if you're playing along at home, you can actually have the slide deck up and you can have a look. Right. So, there's an interesting thing on page... On page... Where We Fit. It's a product lifecycle on page 10. It's Where We Fit. Or it could be page 11 or whatever. Yeah. Page 10. It's titled Where We Fit. So, where Renesys now fits in the... Right from requirements through system architecture, electronic subsystem, component design, electronics design, which is ECAD, electronic subsystem, system assembly, and then the final product, where they fit. They reckon that they fit. I think this means now that... Yes. Yeah, it does. They fit into the...

Chris Gammell: The middle portion.

Dave Jones: Electronics... The middle. The subsystem architecture, the component design, and the electronics design subsystem, which means device evaluation, device selection, and of course, they make the devices, and then simulation and PCB design. Take them into boards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that actually... I think they extend further than that, because they're not including product procurement. So, I think they extend into with... I think...

Chris Gammell: Does Renesys run direct? I mean, I know they do for the big... No, no.

Dave Jones: They probably don't do direct.

Chris Gammell: I think they do a lot of distribution for, like, mass market.

Dave Jones: Right. I don't know if you can buy direct from Renesys. I've never used Renesys.

Chris Gammell: I can't, and you can't, but... Right. No, I'm sure if you're full... Believe me, any company that's big enough to buy direct. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: When Apple calls you, you buy direct.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yes, when Apple throws a billion dollars at you to stop... Stop on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Yeah. One thing that's not mentioned in here that's always interesting to me is, like, especially in the value chain of all this stuff, it's like, they sell... You know, it's not their entire portfolio. It's not even a... I don't even know what portion of the portfolio it is. But, like, a lot of their stuff is software-driven, and they don't list software... Or firmware-driven, I suppose. They don't list the firmware anywhere in here. That's not a product that they're selling, because in this space, it's often just... It's a supporting element. And so, they're not, like, saying, like, oh, this is the thing that we... Yeah, it's a thing.

Dave Jones: Thing. And they just bought more of that thing with the tasking side of things. Yeah, I don't know anything about that. Yeah, that's interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Automotive market. So, I assume they've got their own tools. Yes, yes, they do. They've got a web-based tool. It's the Quick Connect Studio, it's called. Yuck. Is their software package. Yeah, I know. It's kind of a yucky name. Yeah. Yeah. And it's all really cloud-based.

Chris Gammell: Have you ever designed a Renaissance part in, on the micro side?

Dave Jones: I don't... No. No. Me neither. I'm pretty sure I haven't.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yep. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: I know... So, there you go. Well, Renaissance is in the new Arduino R4. I know that.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: They're making overtures into the, like, into the mass market space, right?

Dave Jones: What part are they using on there? What...

Chris Gammell: Oh. Cortex something, something, something.

Dave Jones: Oh, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I thought they were using that... No, really? Their main CPU on the new thing is a Renaissance?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's a micro on there, but then there's an ESP32 as well, I think. Yeah. There's a module.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, it's... There's an ESP32 module that they're using with AT mode just to give it Wi-Fi, which is interesting, right? Renaissance, I don't believe, has a Wi-Fi chip. And then it is the RA4M1 microprocessor. Wow. Exciting name.

Dave Jones: Yeah, terribly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. I mean, like, I shouldn't make fun of it. It's fine. Like, literally, it's a fine name. That was just snarky for absolutely no reason. Yeah. I don't know why I did that.

Dave Jones: No, just based on the name. No, I do that all the time. It's like...

Chris Gammell: I mean, all of these are terrible. Everything's a terrible name. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. But, I don't... Yeah, like I said, I've never designed with it. And, like, they might break into more spaces with this. That's interesting. Hmm. Yep. I think they're trying to drive into new spaces as well. So, I've never used anything, though. I just don't... I don't have any access to it, so...

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And for those... Altium call this acquisition Project Brightside. There's a wank word. There's a wank name for it. Apparently, this is one of their projects, is to sell the company. Yeah. Because, like, Altium have been... I'm sure they've been shopping the company around for a long, long time. Yeah, sure. You know? Yeah, you're always for sale, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is an interesting story. We will link in. It's behind a paywall, but we will link in an archive version of it, which is really nice. Which is the article... It's an Australian Financial Review article. And it tells the story of how this acquisition happened. So, they entered into a confidentiality agreement on December 8th last year. And I went and checked. I did my... I'm being the good journalist that I am. I went and checked to see if there was any bounce in price, to see if there was any bounce in share price after or before December 8th. And it wasn't. There was a couple of months before. So, maybe some people had wind a couple of months before. You don't see the bounce.

Chris Gammell: You just see the people exiting and making money, you know? Entering and making money, I suppose. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, anyway. So, they entered into a confidentiality agreement back then. And, yeah. But, apparently, the two companies came about this deal because they... Prensis started using Altium software only a year or two before that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's interesting.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They started using it. And I guess all the... I don't know. Did all the engineers and managers... It probably started from an engineer going, oh, I like this Altium tool.

Chris Gammell: Man, can you imagine switching over an entire... I know. Can you imagine switching over an entire company to that?

Dave Jones: Well, I'm not sure if it was an entire company or whether it was just some division or some project started using it. But, I don't know. But, yeah. It's a big deal.

Speaker ?: But, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Crazier things have happened, I'm sure, right? Yeah. But, like, just the scale difference of that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: What were they using before that? Maybe Zucan? Because Zucan's a Japanese package. It's very big in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's only big in Japan, isn't it? Oh, no, no, no. It has a U.S. presence. Zucan has a U.S. presence.

Chris Gammell: And they do, like, high-speed interconnect, too, I thought, like, around... Right.

Dave Jones: I was thinking about for, like, flex cables and stuff like that. Yeah, I don't know anyone in Australia that uses it. I don't know anyone here that uses it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not a thing. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. Zucan's a Japanese PCB company. I've never used it, but it's kind of highly regarded, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Apparently, it's a good tool. Yeah. I think they're doing hard stuff, right? I mean, that's what it comes down to, right? I think all the time. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I would assume a Japanese company were using a Japanese CAD tool.

Chris Gammell: Maybe. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe they were using Zucan, and they started using Altium for some reason. We don't know. That ain't going into details, but there you go. And then they started talking, and not long, like, a year after that or something, they approached Altium, and it tells you they were having dinner or something. What was... Did they actually tell you in the article?

Chris Gammell: It was a weird detail. It was a weird detail. Yeah, yeah. It was like they went out for dinner or something. It's very specific.

Dave Jones: They actually went out for dinner, and they said, hey, would you be interested in being brought out? And they went, eh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but that's how it always goes. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And then, apparently, they just went, oh, yeah, let's throw it over to our various lawyers. And they even named the lawyers. Like, Altium had GP Morgan and King & Wood. Maelsons were the lawyers. And Deutsche Bank and DLA Piper were the team for... Doesn't matter. That's what I didn't know. Yeah. But it goes into specific detail. I love articles that go into specific detail.

Chris Gammell: But that kind of felt like that was just listed in the deal paperwork.

Dave Jones: Oh, maybe it was. I forgot the deal paper. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't think they've... So maybe they haven't done extra journalism there. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. They probably just read in from the... That's the same article. Which is a big document. They said it was a chip company. Like, the actual deal. The deal paper is big. It's like the Project Brightside Scheme Implementation Agreement. And it's... It's a hundred... No, it's 69 pages. So it's, you know, it's quite... You'll have to... Yeah. Oh, that's very... Yeah, legally. Oh, here we go. Every sentence gets a reference.

Chris Gammell: God. Ugh. Synergies, Dave. That's what happened here.

Dave Jones: Synergies.

Chris Gammell: That's what happened. This is on page 15 of the slide deck that you sent me. Oh, okay. Oh, oh. Synergies.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh, awesome.

Chris Gammell: The magical thing where two comedies come together and somehow they're synergies. They make more money because of it.

Dave Jones: They're synergies.

Chris Gammell: What is it you say you make here? Oh, we make money.

Dave Jones: Bar graph go up. Bar graph go up. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Bar graph up. Yeah. And if it's a line chart, it goes up to the right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Oh, what was that? That was Microchips CEO Steve Senge's book. That was the name of his book, Up and to the Left, wasn't it? Up and to the Right or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Don't go to the left. That's bad. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It went up. Yeah. Something like that, which is, yeah. The name of the curve of the graph. Endless growth.

Chris Gammell: Every VC presentation, you have to have that chart, right? Yes. Yes, you do. Or else, why would you be there?

Dave Jones: No, exactly.

Chris Gammell: You just always make it happen. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There it is. So, yeah. It has left a lot of people scratching their head about, well, what's going to happen? So, there's talk on the EV blog forum. Of course, there is. Of course. And, yeah, people are going, well, you know, speculating, are they going to scrap the, you know, the cheaper monthly, by cheaper, I mean, a couple of thousand dollars. Yeah. No. No, a year. They currently have a maintenance contract of a couple of thousand dollars a year. And that gets you the full package. But you have to keep it up.

Chris Gammell: Otherwise, it stops working. Yeah. They don't publish the pricing. Oh, no. Alzium famously doesn't. 6K for a seat and about 2,500 for maintenance. Right. And that's like the recurring revenue that they say they have, too. Right? Like, that's, you know, it's going to be, you know, sometimes you can get a deal if you're a salesperson that needs to make their numbers for the quarter or whatever. Blah, blah, blah. You know, Dave, let me tell you about a free and open source CAD program that I like.

Dave Jones: KiCad. KiCad, Dave.

Chris Gammell: It's KiCad.

Dave Jones: KiCad. Yes, exactly. You finally relented and called it KiCad.

Chris Gammell: I thought you were going to do this. I said 2023. I was going to. I was been doing it since 2023.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Well done. Trying to bring people together.

Speaker ?: Congratulations.

Dave Jones: Pat on the back. All right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't think this will have, I mean, like, again, like, thinking about the disruptive

Chris Gammell: I don't think it changes anything. I don't think that changes anything from a lot of companies' perspectives. Like, why would it? Right? And then I was like looking at the slides you sent over to, where did that go? You know, they say at least to be run at arm's length. So it does seem like a cash.

Dave Jones: Yes, they do. Yeah. They specifically make the mention run at arm's length. But they always do that. That's part of the acquisition.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: And Aram is staying on a CEO. I'm not sure how long. But once again, like somebody asked me that. Do you think Aram will jump ship? And I go, no, this is part of the deal. When you buy a company like this, you're buying the CEO. Three to four years. It's written in a contract. I said usually. Your bonuses at the end. Two years or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to stay for a couple of years and then you'll get a nice golden parachute on top of your 600 million or whatever. You're getting, you know, cash payout. Yeah. That's a lot of money. So you can figure out how many shares he has. Well, it's all public information. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it does say on here too, it'll be, it is Australian court and regulators. So you were right about that too.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Yeah. Australian regulators. There you go. Closing. I don't think they will care because there's been a lot of, there's been quite a few Japanese buyouts of Australian companies. It's a thing. And once again, nobody knows who or what Altium is or does. So no one cares. So who's going to ruffle feathers?

Chris Gammell: You might be the locus of people that are talking about it, right? Yeah. I was looking around on like LinkedIn. I figured like LinkedIn, there'd be more stuff about it, whatever.

Dave Jones: We are the only ones who care.

Chris Gammell: No, people do care, but I just, I think.

Dave Jones: No, it's such a small niche.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And all of them, basically all the people who care just hang out on the EV blog forum. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that is the locus. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Or they hang out on the Altium forum, you know? Yeah. I don't know if it's still a thing, but, you know. It is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah. Oh, boy. Meh.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, I've had my fill of Altium stuff, and there's other news we could talk about. Probably not that, I don't know, it doesn't really impact us here, but we have talked about it before. One is Altera, another A company, a former A company, which was absorbed into Intel, is spinning back out of Intel.

Dave Jones: Oh, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I have not heard this. Steve Leapson wrote about it, our former guest.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Steve? Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: It's on the subreddit. I just saw it today.

Dave Jones: I used to get email alerts for his stuff, but I don't know, that stopped at some point.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so there's some gimmicky thing they're doing, and they're going to announce the name on Leap Your Day, because it's the leap forward, as Steve called out. It was silly. It's silly.

Dave Jones: Is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Here you go. Yeah. So I don't know what that really means, other than like, I think Intel, you know, I've said for a long time, I think they're starting to parcel up their foundry business versus their IP business.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Volterra never really fit in there, but it does fit, you know, like, why do you need, you know, FPGAs are still a profitable business, I'm sure, generally, but like, why do you need it to be part of Intel? I don't know. So they're moving it back out. That's fine. It'll probably still use all the Intel. This is probably what would have happened. It probably would have stayed independent and just switched all their business over to the Intel foundry previously anyways, but whatever. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. And then also with Intel, Intel got out of the Chips Act. So when Steve was on, when Steve Sangy was on the show, he talked about, you know, kind of the restrictions around the Chips Act in the US. That's like the funding thing that was supposed to be up to like $50 billion to increase US investment. Intel is getting $10 billion of that $50 billion. Yeah, that's a lot of dough.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, but they are in proportion of the market space.

Chris Gammell: If you're trying to drive new US, I mean, maybe they don't really say about US chip innovation. They're really just trying to build the manufacturing base.

Dave Jones: It sounds like, you know, getting 20% of the government coin.

Chris Gammell: The bag, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but they probably own 20% of the market. So, you know, it's probably not that bad. I mean, yeah, and they're huge.

Chris Gammell: And they're experts, right? But like, damn, that's a lot of zeros.

Dave Jones: Does this mean that Xilinx is going to re-spin out of AMD? Because AMD bought Xilinx. I don't know. Who was first? Was it Xilinx bought AMD first? Sorry, AMD bought Xilinx first?

Chris Gammell: No, I think Altair got bought first.

Dave Jones: Xilinx and Intel and AMD. Like, they just like, oh, my God. I'm sure it happened just because the other company did it, you know? Yeah, right. It's just like, oh, geez, we can't have them buy. We have to buy an FPGA company too.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. That sounds right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Right.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Because, of course, Intel and AMD are kind of sort of rivals.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You don't know.

Chris Gammell: If you don't know, right. If you've not used a computer in the past 30 years.

Dave Jones: And Xilinx and Altair were rivals.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that was crazy. Yeah, so we'll see where this all goes. That's it. Wow. Okay. I think this is another one that doesn't have any impact other than like, well, you got to learn it. You got to get another new T-shirt maybe if you're an Altair user. Right. But, you know, rebranding is being there.

Dave Jones: So, what it's being spun out on its own? What's the. I think so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's going to just become its own company again. How does that work? But, no. But, surely Intel will still be the shareholder, right?

Chris Gammell: How does that. Spitting out. I don't know. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Like.

Chris Gammell: They could. If they go public again, then I suppose they could get relisted as a separate company.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. And then. They could share their holdings. Just be a majority owner. They could sell their holdings or something. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Something like that. To raise money.

Dave Jones: I guess. Right. Could be. Wow. Okay. It's interesting.

Chris Gammell: If I didn't say before, you should never, ever take investment advice from Dave and myself. Dave will make you think that you should take investment advice from him, but don't.

Dave Jones: I told people they should have bought Altium, and if they listened to me, they'd be rich now. I just didn't do it myself.

Chris Gammell: Just don't take any investment advice from Dave. Don't. Or me.

Dave Jones: Hey. Steve's got some interesting history in his article here. Yeah. Which is great. Because he's been in the industry forever. Yeah. So, he knows all the players.

Chris Gammell: And listen to the show with Steve. He was on our show. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe we should get him back on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We should probably. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. So, yeah. These four people secured $750,000 in funding in 1983 to start Altera. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Bernie Voschmidt, Ross Freeman, and Jim Barnett, the second founded. Oh, no. They founded Xilinx. There you go. So, yeah. Wow. Interesting. Interesting history. I'm going to have to have a... Right. After this, this is... Eat some lunch and have a read.

Chris Gammell: There you go. There you go.

Dave Jones: I'll tweet that.

Chris Gammell: Great.

Dave Jones: And I'll have to subscribe to the E.E. Journal Daily Newsletter by Steve as well. Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. I should do that, too. There's so few places. That's the thing. I just, like... Honestly, I'm leaning on, like, LinkedIn and, you know, Twitter once in a while. If I just click over there or, like, Mastodon sometimes, but there's not a lot of electronics on there. And, like, it's just...

Dave Jones: I thought Mastodon was the place, dude. I thought it was the place, huh?

Chris Gammell: I had never said that. You've just been making fun of me the whole time. Right. I'm just trying to get some news, you know. I just...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Dave, what I'm really trying to say is I miss RSS readers.

Speaker ?: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I've been unsubscribing, like, crazy to everything in my inbox. Yeah. If it has an unsubscribe button, I've hit unsubscribe religiously for, like, the last nine months, 12 months. That's the right move. Although I probably wouldn't have done that on Steve's one, but, yeah, so I don't know why that stopped.

Chris Gammell: So there's the JEDEC Daily Brief, and, like, this kind of stuff comes through there, too. Like, that was... I forget who's the editor of that thing. And it's, you know, it's a lot of press releases, so you kind of got to dig through it. I like the analog.io. That's a good one. That's by Mahir Shah. Like, that's a good one. That's got some industry stuff. It's just hard to get news these days for, like, this kind of super niche stuff because there's no infrastructure supporting it, right? It was all ad support for a long time, and it just doesn't exist anymore. There's no reporters. There's nothing like that. No, no. There's nothing. It's down to press releases, blogs, individuals. Steve is the last of a dying breed. Yeah. I mean, like, journals trying to hold this stuff up, and there's some other small advertising things, but, like, so much of their stuff is crap that you do have to find individuals there. You have to find the gems. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But Steve is a gem, so... Yes, totally. He's a gem. Yes.

Dave Jones: Because he won't just report stuff that's happening. He will put his, you know... I don't know how long he's been in the industry, but he'll put history behind it, and he'll put names behind it, and all that sort of jazz, you know? So, yeah. Yeah. He'll actually tell a story.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And Max is another one who writes on their site, Max Maxfield. Like, he's been out a long time, too. Max is great. Yep. Yeah. So... Yep. But we're getting down there, you know? It's just, like, not a lot of... Yeah.

Dave Jones: But Renesys bought out him, huh? I can still remember going to the Renesys... They flew me over to the Renesys trade show back in... 2010, maybe.

Chris Gammell: Wait, is this the thing where you flew to California?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. That was Renesys? Oh, I didn't realize. Oh, okay. That was... Yeah. That was Renesys. I still got their merch. I still got all the merch from the show there. I still got, like, a wheelie bag. You know, everyone got, like, a wheelie bag merch. Like, a actual, you know, travel wheelie bag and stuff.

Chris Gammell: See, they're overpaying for stuff since 2010. When they brought Dave over for...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep. They specifically bought me over there. Oh, well, I was to... I was to do the big introduction for their new contest they had. So they had a design contest. I was one of the judges. Of course. But I was to get up in front of 1,000 people and introduce the contest and talk about it and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Do stand-up. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, do some stand-up. Yep. Yep. So they got me over to do that. That was one of the things. But the other thing was also to host a dinner party. Once again, with, like, 500 people or something, you know, this huge... Book this huge conference hall inside the hotel we were staying at. And so this was one of the two big things they flew me over to do. So, like... And there's all these tables, right? So everyone's sitting down, eating their fancy-pancy dinner and everything. And I, along with a bunch of other people from Renesys, were up on, like, a head table kind of thing. And then we have the mic, right? So we got the mic and we're supposed to, like, have this, like, quiz or something, like, during dinner. And in the end, like, nobody's... Like, nobody... I don't think anyone could hear me with the mic. So I ended up standing up on the table with the mic trying to get this thing started. And, like, nobody was paying attention. And I finally got the cut. Anecdote for the internet. You know, hand gesture across the throat. Just cut it. Nah, just don't bother. Don't bother doing this. It was a complete fail. Because everyone was too busy having their expensive fancy dinner in the restaurant.

Chris Gammell: They didn't want to have a question. They didn't want to have a quiz thing.

Dave Jones: They don't want to be...

Chris Gammell: The internet clown to talk? Come on.

Dave Jones: And I think the year before that, Renesys, they paid top. They put on a really good gig. They got Adam Savage in to do a Q&A thing. They had... No, no, no. They got both the Miss Busters in. They got Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman. And they built something for the show or something, you know? So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man.

Dave Jones: That serious coin was spent by... Corporate gigs. Renesys. Yeah, corporate gigs back in the day. But, oh, geez. That was... Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. That's good. But, yep. They invited me a year later, but I... To Klein, turned that one down. So, I had a young baby then.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: By that point. So, yep. Yeah. But there you go. Yeah. Renesys by Altium. Wow.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: There you go. Well, congratulations if you're an Altium shareholder. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Good party. Good party.

Dave Jones: And I don't think... Look, I don't think it's going to change much. Maybe, like, I wouldn't say it's not going to change much in five years' time. Like, I think we'll come back in five years. Probably still be doing this. And we'll go... I ain't got anything else to do. Come on, man. Okay. I'm a dad now. So, it's obvious, right? You've got to have the stable gigs now.

Chris Gammell: You're saying this is the stable gig? This is the stable... You're saying the amp power is the stable gig?

Dave Jones: This highly paid amp power is the stable gig, dude. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I just got to cash it in, just like my Altium stock. Yeah. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Well, all we've got to do is one of those slide decks, dude. With one of the fancy... No, slide decks. That's... All the fancy synergy.

Chris Gammell: It's like if you were... If you were like an AI engine and you're like, what input causes an output? It's like, oh, well, yeah. If you make slide decks, then you get billions of dollars.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Machine learning, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I wonder if OpenAI can just make us a slide deck to make us a billion dollars.

Chris Gammell: It can. It can? Yeah, of course it can. I'm sure you can get slide decks. At least the verbiage and stupid images.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of last week, a couple people told me that the... You know how we were said... I named it Uncle Al's Eating Garbage Again? Because it was about the...

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: ...the underwater robot that I knew that was actually Uncle Al. I remembered later it was actually... Yep. It was actually Uncle Ralph. That was... Uncle Ralph. Which is a better name, I feel like.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but Uncle Al's okay as well. Okay. Right. But Uncle Al...

Dave Jones: How did anyone know? Did you tell people and they corrected you?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no, no. The thing that people mentioned to me is that when you type out Al, uppercase A, lowercase L, it looks like Uncle AI is eating garbage again. Oh. Which also kind of works because it was an AI image too. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Interesting. Okay. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So what you should do is you should name yourself Al and then everyone thinks you're an AI organization. That's killer. Yeah. That's killer. Make a lot of money.

Dave Jones: Name your next born Al.

Chris Gammell: Al. There you go.

Dave Jones: Well, it's not too late to change the name. They won't realize. I'm just saying. For my child. Your youngest is young enough. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Al. Probably not going to do that. I'm going to be honest.

Dave Jones: But that's a winning idea. It is. Yeah. It is. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Al. Wow. That's great. I'm sure that'll be Elon Musk's next child. There you go. AI. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That guy keeps making new humans.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah. Anyway. That's great. So, yeah. I don't expect much to change. Like, are you feeling the same way? I expect. Yes. I, I, I, yes.

Chris Gammell: Almost, almost certainly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Sure. It'll, it'll eventually, over the next couple of years, I expect it to change in pricing and, like, availability. Whether or not they keep up the web base. Whether or not they go with the, like, sorry, the subscription thing or whether or not they go with...

Chris Gammell: Subscriptions don't go anywhere, I don't think.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Probably, yeah. You don't get rid of subscription, do you? Which is like, I think it's like 60% of their business is sub-scription. So...

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's always like, maintenance is always like a subscription in disguise. Like, oh, you buy, you buy, you bought this piece of software, now we're going to have a subscription every year. It's like, oh, you mean I'm paying for the software every year?

Dave Jones: But the interesting difference now is that, right, everyone's been complaining about it for years. Oh, Altium just care about the share price, right? So they keep doing all this stuff to do the share. Right, there's no pressure like that anymore, right? It's now privately owned. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: People might move out of the, yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: So it's like, will they just let them focus on the tool now? Because there's no share...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they just got married to a new company, you know, let themselves go.

Dave Jones: Well, there is shareholder pressure because people own shares in Renesys, right? People own shares in Renesys, but it's not the same, you know? It's just one little tiny cog, you know? I don't even, like, how big is it? Well, Renesys is like, what, a $60 billion company?

Chris Gammell: I think $50 billion.

Dave Jones: $50 billion. So this deal at $5 billion is, like I said, one-tenth maybe, but it wouldn't be that in revenue, right? No, yeah. It wouldn't. There's no way to be. So from now on, right, according to the shareholders of Renesys, Altium's probably, I don't know, but one-fiftieth of the revenue of...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but Dave, what if there's synergies? If there's synergies, there could be more.

Dave Jones: Synergies. Oh, they're going to be all over it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they can milk that synergy cash cow until it comes on. Synergies, you know? Mmm.

Chris Gammell: Synergies. Delicious synergies.

Dave Jones: Synergy-flavored milk. Mmm. Mmm. Boy, this is just no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. So, yeah, I think there's less pressure now to keep up the revenue. So they could easily slash prices, right? They won't. They won't ask. I wouldn't. Yeah, maybe not. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that. Why would you possibly do that? I mean, like, they're trying to capture more of the market, maybe, right? But, like, I don't...

Dave Jones: Well, Aram is still the CEO, but now he doesn't have the pressure of the shareholders, but now he has to report to the board of directors of Renesys, right? And what will be their thing? Will they go, oh, we don't care. We just wanted your tech, you know? We just wanted your cloudy tech or something, you know?

Chris Gammell: Could be.

Dave Jones: And will they just let Aram just continue to do what he does? In which case, I don't know. How do you set prices in a company that doesn't care?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, maybe you just need the subscriber base. Maybe the management's just like, you know, all your bases belong to us.

Dave Jones: All your bases belong to us, yes. And what becomes, finally, of Circuit Studio? Everyone, if you don't have been following Circuit Studio saga. There's still hangers-on on the EV blog forum going, I paid for Circuit Studio, you promised to give me upgrades, and I haven't had an upgrade in five years, guys. Guys, please, please. Guys, please. Who turned the lights out? Please. So, yes, the lights have been out on Circuit Studio for like five years now. And that's the one you used to be able to buy through Farnell slash Element 14. Yeah. Yeah, that was the one. And that tool was requisite. That tool was at request of Element 14. Because they lost, they were selling some other tool, I can't remember what, and then they wanted their own tool to sell on their store.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wait. Did Altium buy Upverter too? Does Upverter part of this deal? Yes, yes.

Dave Jones: Altium bought Upverter, yes. Oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: They also got that modular design. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Also, I think Pinocchio. There was another board. Someone made a joke about it.

Dave Jones: Oh, that doesn't. No. No, not Pinocchio. Doesn't ring a bell.

Chris Gammell: No. What was it? The gumsticks? Gumsticks. That's it.

Dave Jones: Gumsticks? Altium own gum? God, I haven't heard about gumsticks for ever.

Chris Gammell: That was like a dev board, like, gluing thing, right? Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: It was some sort of dev board thing. Yeah, some little skewer.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, gumsticks gives customers the power to solve their electronic design challenges. I thought, yeah, parent organization. Right. Gumsticks as well. Look at this, man. They're just going to be digging stuff out of the junk drawer that's just like, hey, look what else we bought.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: So, Upfurter, gumsticks. Yeah. I wonder if there's like a page. Is there an Altium page of things they bought and shuttered?

Speaker ?: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, I wonder if they'll still keep, because you can still download AutoTracks for free. They actually released it as freeware. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, oh, maybe they'll get the trademark back for AutoTracks and they'll sue the AutoTracks guy out of business. For those who don't know, I'm not sure if I've told this story. But there is another PCB software called AutoTracks. Go check it out. It's written by one guy. It's written by, it's written and sold by one guy. You know, that's such a great name. It's written and sold by one guy.

Chris Gammell: Why wouldn't you want to steal that, right?

Dave Jones: AutoTracks, yeah. He used the same name as what Altium were using for their PCB product, but Altium let the trademark lapse. And the guy went, well, I'm going to take that. I'm just going to take it. And then Altium went, well, we threatened to sue you. And the guy just went, well, you didn't maintain the trademark. Tough titties. And Altium just went, oh yeah, fair enough. So this guy has been selling his own version of AutoTracks for like 25 years or something.

Chris Gammell: AutoTracks, Taylor's version.

Dave Jones: I wonder if it's, oh my God, I've got to look at it. His name's Illager or something. Illager, oh, Dex. Well, no, no. Technically it's called AutoTracks Dex. And I'll send you the link here and you can still buy it. I'm sure you can still, it's written by one guy. It's just hilarious. And he named it the same as ProTel AutoTracks. Unbelievable. AutoTracks Dex. It does integrated design, schematic design, PCB design, and manufacturing.

Chris Gammell: This website is a trip, man. This is the 90s. This is from the 90s.

Dave Jones: It's originally 90s. It's original HTML from the 90s. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Although it kind of looks like it might be, what was that site that I called? One of the content management systems. Oh boy, autoplaying video. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you've got to take your hat off to this guy, right? He's written this all himself. And it does 3D modeling. The 3D models look pretty cute, actually. And it does everything. It does simulation as well. Schematics, PCB. It's a fully integrated package. All in one. I don't know how many users he has. Probably a couple hundred. He's written it all himself. So, yeah. Yeah. Hats off. But Altium threatened to take legal action against him at the time. And he just went, meh. And Altium just went, meh. How to steal a company's name, 101. Just wait until like, oh. Yeah. Wait until the trademark lapses. Wow.

Chris Gammell: This website is a trip, man.

Dave Jones: It's great. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. You can still buy it. Can you still, yeah, buy. How much? $145. There you go. You can buy Autotrax Dex for $145.

Chris Gammell: Never expires.

Dave Jones: Purchase now with PayPal. It's great. Oh, boy. And there's no subscription rubbish either. You buy it. It's yours.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Bingo. Yeah.

Dave Jones: 12 months of upgrade.

Chris Gammell: Just see if he wants to advertise in the Empire because you're doing a good job there.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I don't know anyone who actually uses. So good luck. But yeah, anyway. Yeah. It's a one-man bag.

Chris Gammell: This has got a lot of sites. Holy crap.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: This is really, really something. Yeah. There's a newsletter. There's a newsletter. There's a newsletter. It's all I know what I'm going to sign up for, Dave.

Dave Jones: All right. Where's the newsletter? I can't see it.

Chris Gammell: It just redirects me to the front page. So I don't actually know. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's great. And they even call it Unified Design. Yeah. Which is what Altium called their unified platform. It was Unified Design.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, real artists steal, don't they? Yeah. So yeah. Anyway, it's great. Auto tracks, decks. Terrific stuff. Oh boy. Our amp hour is well and truly up, dude.

Chris Gammell: It is.

Dave Jones: So that's the Altium extravaganza.

Chris Gammell: That was the Altium extravaganza. I had other things I wanted to talk about too, but I guess we'll talk about them next time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Next week. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Next time.

Dave Jones: Yep. Cool.

Chris Gammell: All right. Cool bananas.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: See you soon.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time. Bye.

Speaker ?: !